The Need for Flexible Take-Ups of Home Equity and Pension Wealth in Retirement

Abstract

This paper analyzes for the Netherlands the need to introduce flexible take-ups of home equity and pension wealth, complementary to recent reforms in Dutch pensions and mortgages. The young may gain from supplementing a possible pension shortfall with additional retirement income from reverse mortgage contracts. The elderly may benefit of the innovation of partial lump sum of accrued pension rights in order to partly redeem mortgage debt, whilst maintaining an adequate net replacement rate from pensions.